I stopped and sort of chuckled, while mentally preparing my short speech. This should be easy.

But she stopped me, “I absolutely hate it.”

“Um, you hate…blogging?” I responded, almost hurt and definitely confused.

She said that at work she had to blog on behalf of her boss in his plans to “dominate social media.” She literally spent much of hey work day regurgitating her boss’ demented ideas on golf and Mitt Romney into cyberspace.

And she said that no one read the blog!

It was forced blogging and it sounded absolutely awful. Criminal almost.

I chuckled (sadly this time) as I pondered her “blog”.

I’ve always believed the best blogging covers our passions but this made me wonder what other types of blogging people are doing.

Blogging for businesses? Ghost-blogging? Forced-blogging? What the heck!?

Needless to say I held off on my speech.

We finished our wine and walked off into the snowy night.

Failure is a big reality

According to one source, 95% of blogs fail.

Either the marketing is off or the content stinks. No coherence, no social proof and no traction.

The sad thing is this: People assume blogging is productive and don’t look much further into it. They think publishing steady content guarantees steady growth and that people, some form of weird, nameless online people, are just reading.

That is usually quite far from the truth.

Blogs fail by default. They stumbled into the blogosphere, make a few cries for attention, then end up in an online graveyard with countless others. If you can’t connect with a target audience (most never do) you’ll almost surely die out.

Failure is big reality.

…But, hope exists.

If your mindset is right and your passions great, you can make it. Even ProBlogger was brand new at one point. Even Obama had to give his first speech somewhere, probably to a mere handful of people.

Even Chipotle struggled in it’s first months due to stiff resistance from Taco Bell. Now who sells more burritos?

Now I’m no master. Far from it. Even “expert” would be a stretch.

But I have marketed, grown, and otherwise hustled a few blogs into lovely existence and have come to love this “job” a tad more each day. So, if for nothing more than my own usage, I’ve written this list of “ways to make it in blogging”.

You may want to hit bookmark and save this for future reference.

How to be a success (readers, growth, and everything else we dream of)

“A fool with a plan often beats the brilliant man without a plan.” – Mark Twain

1) Have a plan

Does blogging ever seem impossible? A plan of immediate and long term to-dos like “increase my PageRank to PR3” or “get published on 3 blogs” or “write 2 posts by Friday” will turn blogging from an open-ended do-it-whenever task to a conquerable activity.

2) Start building your network immediately

Trying to become a star on your own? Blogging is a LOT about relationship building and you need a network of bloggers at or around your level who appreciate your work and will share it. They’ll make your blog feel popular when it’s not and make publishing posts a lot more fun.

3) Get on WordPress.org

Do you blog on the best platform? The blogging world is becoming increasingly WordPress dominated and you’d be wise to upgrade. Joining WordPress is the best step a blogger can make to take their work to the next level.

Struggling with blog promotion? The 80/20 rule for new bloggers states you must spent at least 80% of your time off the blog doing things like marketing and guest posting and a maximum of 20% of your time (initially) on your blog.

Think everyone loves your design? Your blog might look like a “10” to you but to us it could be a confusing, cluttered, 5.5 of a mess and one friend (who at least knows how to read blogs) can be really helpful to tell you what’s going wrong.

12) Social proof not social media

Still only have a handful of fans? We all want 100,000 Facebook and Twitter fans, but for many of us that’ll never ever happen. However, social proof can be just as effective as social media for building a following. Prominent quotes, strong comment counts, and any other sign of blog popularity works great.

13) Make a niche specific landing page

Are your offers clear enough? If people don’t know what they stand to gain at your blog they’ll probably say adios you can say hello. A concise, hard-selling landing page is the solution.

Do you force yourself to write? Confidence is often a roller coaster but if you write at the peak of it you’ll produce much better results than when writing at those low moments we all experience at times.

Are your titles bland? Good post, bad title. See it all the time. Bad post, great title? See that one too, often times on the really successful blogs like DeadSpin and Huffington Post. Make sure your titles aren’t selling you short.

Who are you blogging for? Your target audience is people who love your messages and say yes to your offers. Defining and keeping them will allow your blog to prosper even through really tough times.

19) Unify your message

Not sure about your marketing strategy? A simple fix is to make your messages on Twitter, Facebook, G+ and email really consistent. This will allow people to get used to you and solidify YOU as a brand.

Feeling deflated? I’m going to leave you with this article at Social Triggers. Realize it may take a bit of fighting, sweat, and tears to get your blog off the ground and a lot of success comes from your willingness to push harder.

Will this work for you?

Of course this stuff will work. I wouldn’t put it here if I didn’t truly believe this would help you be a success in blogging.

That said, it’s not that straightforward. There exists no single blogging success blueprint despite what countless other bloggers will tell you.

It just doesn’t exist.

Your success, instead, comes from how you apply information like the above in a unique way that compliments your own strengths.

It’s all about your own voice and your own ideas. So get to it. Work at it. Try out each of the above methods and let us know what works best.

A twist on comments

As you probably know I often ask readers to comment on whatever is on your mind. This time though let’s do it different, please post the number of your favorite list item above.

Then I’ll tally them up and see where we should spend the most time focusing on. Thanks guys, hope you enjoyed this edition of cornerstone content and as usual look forward to hearing from you.

45 Responses to "Success: What Bloggers Must Do To Promote a Blog on the Home Front"

Nice list. I’m not sure whether I’m moving in the right direction because just like what you’ve said, everybody is using wordpress except for me. I’ve decided to choose a different platform as I think jimdo is also easy to understand especially for a newbie like myself. I hope that doesn’t have any negative implication. Your comment? Also can you please elaborate on the monetization part? Don’t quite understand on the 6 months time period. Thanks

Don’t know much about Jimbo. But in terms of benefits: WordPress’s community is tremendous. Lots of free resources for SEO, design, and traffic. If Jimbo has the same going for them then by all means, hope it works well.

If you think everybody is using WordPress then…could be a good decision.

6 months is basically a nice window to build content and authority necessary to successfully monetize. But I figure folks won’t listen to me and will begin this after about 2 🙂

Oh well, if you buy me a ticket then gladly 😛 Oh they helped me all 😀 No but to be more precise: I like the tip about the “about me” page. I never realized that it is important for readers to connect with the person who writes there. Also the thing about wordpress and joining the community. I had blogs and websites before my current one, I never took this “creating a network” so seriously though. So that one is kind of a biggie for me. In generall its a really eyeopening post about the dos and donts (like, don’t try to chase after money immediately). So thank you 🙂 Have a nice weekend!

Nothing Greg – just a little SM lethargy. Great that you are his bud now. He was my guru when I was still banging my heads trying to sort out the G+ ecosystem. I remembered he was on my A-list circle. Anyway have fun there! Your list – I gravitate towards 1,2,15 and 16.

Hey Greg, My favorite ll be what you mentioned before the list – passion. Blogging is a long war, only by blogging topics that cover our passion, our blogger’s life can be longer and happier. And a lot simpler to win. Seems like we hv a same belief. (;

In the list, it’ll be 1, 2, and 16. Bookmarked. Brief but full of valuable ideas. I learned something.

14, 17, 20 and point about premium theme and WP.org were superb! But I’m lying truly. Actually, I loved all the points, Greg. I have bookmarked it for later use. I also loved your story in start. That was nice fun infact. Thanks for super content. I need this.

No problem, and thanks. I’m still not sure I’ve cracked the art of writing good titles, though. I try to make sure they’re short and contain the relevant keywords, which is hard enough. Given that most of my articles are about printers, making them snappy and interesting as well feels near-impossible. My most successful article to date was about the rise of inkjet printers as business machines and was called “Inkjet is the New Laser. It’s one one the few titles I’m actually happy with.

Success. A Short word, but it breaks us apart, to really get our name attached to it.

Quite interesting plan to achieve success, but having a plan and putting it into action are 2 different things. Many bloggers falls because they don’t take their blogging plan seriously and think that working with half heart will make them successful.

For me the most interesting points 16, 19, and 20. 🙂 Thanks fot the share.

About DearBlogger

DearBlogger is a free WordPress resource and community geared towards providing you free and fast advice to build a better blog. DearBlogger was founded in September 2012 in Manhattan by Greg Narayan. Our mission on this site is to provide clearer answers than what's out there currently, and make blogging, advertising, online marketing, web design, eCommerce, and any kind of website creation mainly using WordPress easier for beginners.